The Widow's Confession (5 page)

‘Especially not for a body – for a corpse won’t pay. Forgive me,’ said Mr Gorsey with a glance towards Delphine. In his agitation he had forgotten his obsequiousness. He
pondered the problem. ‘I can fetch Mr Hallam, the parson – he may know what to do. Or . . .’ he hesitated. ‘We could leave her. She is hardly our responsibility.’

‘That is not possible,’ said Benedict. ‘Let us fetch Mr Hallam. We will go together. But not you, madam,’ he said to Delphine. ‘It is not right that you should come
with us.’

‘I think it absolutely right that I should,’ she said, and saw Mr Gorsey look sharply at her. ‘I am hardly a green young girl, and I have seen much of illness and death in my
own family. We do not know what the circumstances are, but it would sit better with me if I could be there. This poor woman should have one of her own sex at her side, for the sake of
decency.’ She looked at each of them in turn, and waited for their objections. ‘Let us not lose any more time,’ she said.

They found the clergyman and his guest at breakfast; the meal was hastily abandoned and Mr Hallam asked Mr Steele to attend also. ‘Your medical knowledge may be of use to
us,’ he said. Edmund thought it would be ungracious to remind him of the fact that he was on holiday, and noted with interest that there was a lady in their midst – the fine lady he had
seen at church.

‘She is the painter Solomon mentioned,’ Benedict said in a low voice to Edmund as they left the house. ‘Fine-looking, is she not? But headstrong. Short of forcibly bundling her
back to her house we cannot get her to quit the situation.’ He looked as though he would have relished the prospect of putting such a plan into action.

‘She seems determined,’ said Theo, who was walking on Edmund’s other side. ‘If she is so wilful that she will not listen to reason then she must take what
comes.’

Walking behind them, Delphine heard everything but said nothing. She had seen the displeasure in the priest’s face at the sight of her. Yet the same impulse which had urged her to follow
the servant to the hotel pushed her on. She knew it was dangerous to involve herself in local affairs, to attract attention, when the safest course was to remain anonymous and away from prying
eyes. Despite this, the gentlemen’s desire to stop her from going with them intensified her need to continue; it was an instinctive battle.

The group hurried on, turning the corner and passing downhill, walking under York Gate, a gateway that had once had a portcullis as a defence against raiders from the sea.

The bay was empty except for gulls; the blue sky and pale sand giving an impression of serenity, with the sea lapping at the shore and barely a cloud in the sky. There were no hovellers or
mariners on the pier; the only breaks in its dark silhouette were the capstans, and a few gulls. The strong smell of seaweed, entangled in the legs of the wooden pier, hung in the air, and a dense
green line along the beach showed where the outline of the sea had been earlier.

As soon as they came to the sand Mr Benedict began to walk faster, and as he passed her Delphine saw a kind of desperation on his face – as though he knew that if he did not press on, at
speed, he would turn away and not come back. Mr Gorsey came to a halt on the road, as if some invisible barrier had been reached. ‘I will stay here,’ he said. Then, defensively,
‘I did not ask to be part of this business.’

Mr Benedict hurried along the water’s edge for some way. He reached what Delphine saw as a small mound, then raised his hand to signal to them.

Mr Steele reached him next. Delphine sensed Mr Hallam come alongside her, then saw that he was offering her his arm.

‘If you must see this,’ he said.

She remembered the flicker of harshness in his eyes when he had caught sight of her.

‘I thank you, but I do not need your assistance,’ she said.

He dropped his arm. ‘Very well.’

Mr Steele was crouching down beside the girl, so at first Delphine only saw her bare feet and her legs. She was wearing a flowing white gown – an underdress. Mr Steele was examining her;
he looked up at them and shook his head. ‘There’s no hope,’ he said, ‘no hope at all. She has been dead several hours at least.’ He stood up and dusted the sand from
his trousers, and the girl’s face and torso came into view.

Delphine could not look away. Her eyes were fixed on the dead child before her, and her heart was beating hard. She forced herself to keep her composure, but she felt suddenly, desperately sick.
The girl looked to be in her early teens, but there was nothing of adulthood about her at all; her features still had the softness of childhood, and the tiny number of freckles across the bridge of
her nose shone out against the now purplish-white hue of her face. Her hair was long and a pale blonde, and there were pieces of seaweed and shells entangled with the loose curls. She looked as
though she was sleeping, but it was a troubled sleep; a slight frown seemed to lie across her beautiful, childish face, and her right arm lay curved above her head, as though she had flung it
there. Her dress was saturated with water.

‘I can see no mark of violence upon her,’ said Mr Steele. He knelt down again, and raised the body slightly. Delphine wondered at the wiry strength in his arms as he did so. ‘I
cannot be sure, of course,’ he said, ‘but it would be logical to think that she has drowned.’

‘It seems the sea has carried her in,’ said Mr Hallam. He crouched beside the body, holding one hand up in a gesture of blessing as Mr Steele placed her back down. ‘Bless this
child of Yours, O Lord, that she may find eternal rest in You.’ And his voice sank low, as he murmured in Latin.

Mr Gorsey had, at last, joined them. He had made his way across the sand and now stood a little way from the body, his lower lip trembling. ‘Poor little thing,’ he said hoarsely.
‘I do not recognize her.’

Delphine flinched at the sound of his voice, and realized that she was standing, staring at the girl and the praying Theo, her arms limply at her sides.

Mr Steele came towards her. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, wiping his hands free of wet sand, awkwardly, on his coat. ‘I know we have only just met, but you do not look well. Do you
think you may faint?’

‘I will not faint,’ said Delphine sharply, and he raised his chin and nodded.

‘Look here.’ Mr Benedict was staring at the ground a small way from the macabre discovery, trying to keep his gaze averted from the body. ‘Writing,’ he said. ‘It
doesn’t make sense.’

Delphine walked over to him, as did Mr Steele. Hallam had stood up, and was looking down on the girl, his features softened in a kind of mourning protectiveness. He took his coat off, and laid
it over the girl’s body.

Delphine, Benedict and Edmund stood together, looking down, bonded in their mutual incomprehension. Drawn in the sand, in capital letters, was the word:
WHITE
.
Beneath it, in smaller letters, drawn falteringly:
White as
snow
.

I did not understand Mr Benedict. His emotions would emerge suddenly, violently, and were as changeable as the weather on that coast. One moment he would weep for the dead
child; the next I would see him watching me with a coldly observant eye. I had no idea why I was the particular subject of his interest, though already I noticed his eyes linger on every woman he
passed.

They put the shell of that poor little girl on a table. The writing on the sand had changed the mood of the group from one of mere sadness: there was an amorphous fear in the room, at least
that was what I felt. Was it I alone who thought that a man had snatched her, perhaps violated her, and drowned her? No one said it; I think we all had the desire to turn away and suppress the
thought, for surely who would wish to hurt such innocence? Now, I know it was because of that innocence that she died. Her very purity was an invitation to darkness.

Mr Gorsey quailed at the idea of the girl being taken to the Albion Hotel. He went immediately to the Tartar Frigate, the inn which sat almost on a level with the beach, looking out onto the bay
– an inn which often had sandbags at its door in the winter, he informed Delphine conversationally. There he hammered on the door and hallooed up, for he knew the landlord well.

In the end it was the landlord who picked the girl up from the beach, the water now fully retreated from her, and the sun beginning to dry the wet sand near the tide, so it was turning from a
dark brown to that lighter multifaceted golden colour, the colour which, beneath the sun, showed every grain. The innkeeper was a short, broad man with huge, muscular shoulders and arms covered
with tattoos that told of a seafaring past, but he lifted the girl so tenderly that emotion caught Delphine unawares; she had to turn away, to hide the tears stinging her eyes. She had not wept for
many years and she had no idea, not then, and not later at her fireside, why it had caught her so, that emotion, and blindsided her. Only that, as she tried to gather her composure and harden
herself, she saw the painter, Mr Benedict, who had dropped all pretences along with his hat and was wiping tears from his face with his handkerchief.

As the innkeeper trudged away with the mermaid in his arms, Mr Hallam bent down, picked up the hat, and presented it to Mr Benedict.

‘Ah,’ said Mr Benedict, his voice trembling, ‘that is good of you, Hallam. Thank you.’

The Tartar Frigate was dark inside. There were aged bare boards on the floor and at the bar; the walls were of black flint, and there were thickly varnished wooden benches and booths. It was a
place of ancient lineage, Delphine could tell, of nooks and crannies. A place for local lovers, mariners, fighters and conversers: not for tourists. The innkeeper laid the girl down on one long
trestle table, still ringed with the remnants of the drinks taken the night before.

‘I’ve seen others like her,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Plenty are taken by the sea. But she’s a young ’un. A baby.’ He put his hand out and Delphine saw
that, instinctively, he was set to brush the girl’s pale curls from her forehead, as one might do to a sleeping child. But his hand stopped halfway through the action: it froze in mid-air and
he drew back, glancing at a woman who had just arrived behind the bar: hard-faced, commanding. Sure enough, he went towards her and placed his hand upon the bar; and the woman laid her hand over
his. Delphine was fascinated by the gesture: it seemed to combine protectiveness, strength and ownership, all in one brief movement.

‘Gorsey,’ said the woman, in a rich, deep voice. ‘What the bloody hell have you brought to our door?’ Then she caught sight of Theo. ‘Sorry, sir. A good morning to
you.’

Mr Steele sprang into action with an apologetic smile. ‘Madam, please forgive us. May I introduce myself?’

In moments, they found a mutual respect borne of plain speaking.

‘We’re not open for a while yet,’ the woman ended, ‘but get Dr Crisp here, and then take her out.’

Mr Benedict decided it would be he who would fetch the doctor; he seemed to feel that action was preferable to waiting in the darkness of the inn. He looked so severely distressed that Delphine
worried that he might begin to sob or collapse. As he bolted out, she knew that time was moving on, and that Julia would be wondering where she was. If only she had had the foresight to leave a
note, or wake her cousin – but how was she to know what would develop?

Within fifteen minutes Dr Crisp had arrived. He was a fine-looking, if pasty fellow, not more than thirty-five but with an air of respectability which comforted Delphine. Nevertheless, he had
purplish bags under his eyes and looked as though he had enjoyed a heavy night. He was still rubbing his eyes when he came to the Tartar Frigate, and at the sight of the body, he did not flinch nor
let his eyes dart away; there was no sign of distress. Mr Benedict, who had apparently almost beaten down his door in summoning him, had gone to the bar, where the landlady was pouring him a
generous whisky. He drank it then put his hat on, pulling it down so low it was almost over his eyes.

Crisp sighed. ‘A sad case. I see nothing unusual here, at all. She has gone into the water.’

‘Nothing unusual?’ shouted Benedict, from the bar. ‘My God, what a hardened soul you must be.’

‘Do you recognize her?’ asked Edmund.

‘No,’ said Crisp glumly. ‘She will be reported soon enough, I’m sure. Pretty little thing.’

Delphine swallowed hard, and looked away. A headache was building behind her eyes, and she suddenly realized she was holding herself in tension, as though she might be struck. Mr Hallam came
over to her quietly. ‘You are not well,’ he said, his steady gaze taking in her face. ‘You must allow me to escort you back to your house. You should not have come.’ His
voice was icy, but his gaze showed no emotion at all.

‘I am quite well,’ she said. ‘I will go home in a moment.’

He checked his pocket-watch. ‘I must go to Morning Prayer,’ he said. ‘Mr Steele – will you see that this lady is taken back to her house?’

Edmund came forwards, his face showing his puzzlement at Theo’s abruptness.

‘Dr Crisp, it’s good to see you,’ called the landlady, refilling Mr Benedict’s glass as he handed over some money to her. ‘Do you care for a porter?’

Crisp brightened visibly. ‘Don’t mind if I do, ma’am.’

‘On the house, sir,’ she said merrily. ‘But you’d better move things along.’

Edmund walked Delphine back to Victory Cottage. Mr Gorsey had marched back to the Albion Hotel, with the distinct air of someone who hoped to completely disentangle himself
from what he had just seen, whilst they’d left Mr Benedict drinking with Dr Crisp. It had been agreed that the body would be moved to the undertaker’s, and Mr Benedict was insisting
that an inquest should be held. Dr Crisp, however, had made it clear that in his mind, the girl had merely wandered into the water and been drowned.

‘Well,’ said Edmund, after several moments of silence. ‘What terrible things we have seen this morning.’

‘There is no need to deliver me to my doorstep,’ said Delphine. ‘I am quite well, and I promise not to faint in the road.’